


Ineffable (or: How to Fall in Seven Easy Steps)

by pollyrepeat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-24
Updated: 2009-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollyrepeat/pseuds/pollyrepeat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heaven. Hell. Team Winchester. No one ever mentioned <i>this</i> when they gave him his orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ineffable (or: How to Fall in Seven Easy Steps)

**Author's Note:**

> This is, essentially, rampant speculation based on the first half or so of season four. Many thanks to [](http://jonesandashes.livejournal.com/profile)[**jonesandashes**](http://jonesandashes.livejournal.com/) for the beta.

_seven_:

Sam Winchester is dying on a library floor. Dean will not be back in time to save him.

 

_one_:

That second night, in the dark quiet of the kitchen, Castiel is angry, and impatient, and grief hangs heavy in his heart. Dean is ... frustrating. Persistently faithless. Castiel uses fear like a clumsy hammer, chiseling out the path that he requires Dean to take. Perhaps later there will be time to find a more delicate tool, but they cannot afford it now.

He is cruel, but cannot bring himself to be sorry. His fallen brothers stand bright behind his eyelids.

 

_two_:

Uriel has chosen a vessel that is physically imposing.

Castiel has a vague awareness of his vessel being small and non-threatening in comparison. Also, he wears a tie. Uriel does not wear a tie.

Stop thinking about the physical, Uriel tells him. He stands by the window, arms hanging loose below his waist like they're unimportant. They _are_ unimportant, Uriel says.

 

_three_:

Dean wants a piece of chocolate pie like lives depend upon it. It is incredibly distracting.

"So, whatever, don't worry about it. Me and Sam took care of it," Dean says, leaning against the sun-warmed brick of the restaurant. He glances in the window like he's making sure Sam is still there, relaxes minutely. _Pie_, his mind shouts, drowning out the more serious thoughts lurking and bobbing underneath.

"Hmm," Castiel says. _Pie_, he thinks, and startles.

 

_four_:

He walks the vessel through the revolving doors. There are five-hundred-forty humans milling around with no idea that their deaths will open the seal that's etched into the very air around them. No. Five hundred-thirty-four humans with no idea. The other six are screaming inside their own heads and he is resolutely not flinching back.

It is so, so hard to be physical, to feel those possessed bodies pushing at him like something in his chest is being compressed. Ribs. Rib bones. This body is too small for him. When he first inched inside it, burning out its original inhabitant with holy fire, he could feel pieces of himself spilling over the edges. It fits better, now.

The demon wearing a grandmother in a knitted yellow sweater is starting toward him. He pushes the worry away, attempts to concentrate on the battle at hand. This is - what did Dean say? This is for all the marbles. Every seal is for all the marbles.

When he flexes his fingers he can feel muscles contract, tiny bones shifting against one another.

When did they become _his_ fingers?

 

_five_:

Castiel is not hungry. The vessel is easily maintained in a kind of living stasis; it does not require sustenance. He buys a piece of pie with the folded paper money he found in one the body's coat pockets, anyway, and feels guilty.

The combination of the warm chocolate sliding through his mouth and the unfamiliar, almost unrecognizable sensation of guilt make him a little dizzy. Then the realization of dizziness makes him dizzy.

He spends a couple of minutes folded in half over the diner table, cheek resting against scratched Formica, staring at his slightly sloppy piece of pie with one bite taken out of it.

He waits for everything to stop spinning.

 

_six_:

Ruby is skittish, holding herself unnaturally still and stiff on the other side of the table. Hell has distorted her features and made her difficult to look upon, so Castiel does not. He stares at the bar instead, where Dean and Sam lean casually against it, speaking quietly. Every once in awhile they glance up from the pool game they are watching, spot him looking at them, and grin. Dean waves.

"They think it's funny," Ruby says, and Castiel darts his eyes toward her just in time to spot her rolling her own. Her tone is frustrated, but there's an undercurrent of fondness that both reassures and troubles him.

"Yes," Castiel says, and shifts his gaze to the waitress approaching their table with a basket of fries.

"Here y'are, hun," she says to Ruby, setting them down in front of her. "Lemme know if there's anything else."

"Thanks," says Ruby, and slowly bites into a single fry. "So gooood," she moans, as though she's forgotten where she is and who she's with. Avoiding Ruby's show, Castiel rubs the thumb of his left hand against the scratched tabletop. Previous patrons have scored graffiti into it with pocket knives and fork tines.

"That one says 'cocksucker,'" Ruby tells him helpfully, and then the basket of fries is pushed against his hand. "Have one," she says, abrupt. It's phrased like a challenge. It probably is. "Fries are seriously 92% of why I help the Winchesters out." She pauses, leaning forward over the table and waiting for him to make a move, then apparently changes her mind and withdraws to her corner of the booth. Gives him a little space. She leaves the fries behind.

Slowly, mindful of his experience with the pie, he picks up a fry and puts it in his mouth. Chews. Swallows. Resolutely does not sway in his seat. The corner of Ruby's mouth curves into a faint smile, somehow dimming the nauseating _wrongness_ of her true features.

"Thank you," Castiel says, and she relaxes minutely, slinging an arm over the back of the bench.

He waits another moment before glancing toward the Winchesters, still sitting by the bar. They have abandoned all pretence of interest in the pool game and are instead watching Castiel and Ruby steadily, something akin to satisfaction in their gazes.

Castiel thinks about Sam Winchester's plan to pit heaven against hell in a bid to save Anna. Thinks about Dean daring Uriel to call his bluff. He turns back toward Ruby, who is munching her fries in something approaching contentment, and steals one for himself. She doesn't try to stop him.

He thinks, _we are in so much trouble_.

 

_seven_:

The demons have been dispelled, but Sam Winchester is dying on a library floor and Dean will not be back in time to save him.

Uriel wipes blood from his sword, but whirls back around to face Castiel when he hears him kneeling beside Sam.

Leave him, Uriel says, implacable. You know our orders.

"I promised Dean," Castiel says, using the vessel to shape his words, abandoning his true voice. This is not disobedience, not yet, but he's having trouble catching his breath, gasping in ragged counterpoint to Sam's own inhalations, and he knows that Uriel has noticed. "I promised Dean I would take Sam Winchester to safety."

Sam Winchester should be dead many times over. His time has come. We will leave him to his fate, Uriel snarls.

"I promised," Castiel repeats. The vessel - the - his body. His body is thrumming with anticipation as he places a hand on Sam's shoulder. They are both sticky with blood.

Uriel advances, spilling over the edges of his vessel; the air around him crackles with a dark and angry energy. Uriel, Castiel reflects, is probably in just as much trouble as he is.

A promise to these - these _humans_ means nothing! Uriel booms; the pages of scattered books flutter wildly. Past Uriel's true voice, Castiel can just make out the sound of distant windows shattering.

Sam chokes on a mouthful of blood; it's the signal Castiel didn't even know he was waiting for. Time's up. "You're wrong, Uriel," he says, and _pushes_, watches his brother twist and flare and disappear into a bright spear of light.

Feeling calm and steady for the first time in months, he speaks into the sudden absence of noise. "He's wrong," he tells Sam. "It means everything." He tightens his grip on Sam's shoulder, ominously still beneath him. Braces for impact.

 

_i_:

There is no oak tree and they're not in Kansas, but it's a miracle of creation all the same.

 

_ii_:

Dean is humming. It might be some sort of nursery rhyme; something repetitive and simple. Sam shoots him a dirty look from the other side of the table. "I was born on a _Monday_," he says repressively. "Not on a Tuesday. You can stop that, now."

"I'm sure I can," Dean says easily, still humming, as Ruby makes a noise that's a cross between a snort and a giggle.

"Let me rephrase that," Sam answers. He stretches his long arms across the table in a feint toward Dean's pie while Dean squawks indignantly and scrambles to defend it, leaving Ruby free to dump the entire shakerful of salt on top of Dean's bacon and eggs.

"That is so not fair," Dean says. He stares mournfully at his plate. Castiel takes advantage of this moment of distraction, and steals the pie.

There's a demon sitting in the booth closest to the kitchen, angelic chatter has just informed him that Uriel is on his way, and there are only twenty-one seals remaining. But Sam's nose has stopped bleeding during exorcisms since that night in the library, and Dean is smiling despite the loss of desert.

The demon shifts and stands, making for the door. Ruby smoothly extricates herself from the booth, knife hilt just visible between the tops of her jeans and the bottom of her shirt, and heads toward the outside. "I'll be back in a minute," she calls over her shoulder.

Team Winchester. No one ever mentioned _this_ when they gave him his orders. Of course, no one ever mentioned pie, either. He takes an enormous bite. "This is very good," he tells Dean.

END


End file.
